Peace of mind was Mikaela Shiffrin's biggest victory in 2026 Winter Olympics

All the talent in the world isn’t enough.

Not when the eyes of the world are trained on you. Not when the expectations on you are bigger than the mountain you’re standing atop or the arena you’re in the middle of. You can have put in thousands of hours of physical work and, still, it won’t be enough. At some point, you will falter. You will be awash in doubt. Your body might even rebel against you.

The difference between overcoming it and being the peanut gallery’s latest object of scorn or, worse, pity, is what else you did. The work you did mentally, to prepare yourself for this moment emotionally and psychologically as well as physically.  

“Everyone used to think it’s weak to be vulnerable. And it’s actually quite the opposite. Anyone can mask anything. It’s far more courageous to stand on stage and say, 'This is going on with me,’” said Abbey Fox, a licensed clinical psychologist who works with Mikaela Shiffrin and spoke to USA TODAY Sports with Shiffrin’s permission.

The 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics provided yet another reminder that elite athletes are neither robots nor superhuman, as well as the importance they emphasize their mental health as much as their physical health and training.

Figure skater Ilia Malinin fell apart under the weight of the pressure, not even making the podium in an event he was considered a shoo-in to win. Shiffrin, having learned from her own nightmarish experience at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, was able to tune out the external noise on her way to winning gold.

“It’s the mental aspect that pulls everything together. The performance aspect and delivering, that comes down to mental,” Simone Biles, who has become a fierce advocate for mental health after her experience with “the twisties” at the Tokyo Summer Olympics, told USA TODAY Sports.

“It’s important to let people know it’s not a walk in the park,” Biles added. “For me, it took more mental work than physical. It shouldn’t be taken lightly.”

As Shiffrin prepares for the FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup Finals that began March 21 in Lillehammer, Norway – where she could secure a record-tying sixth overall title – it’s worth looking back at how she prioritized her mental health on her way to the top of the podium, and what lessons that can provide for other athletes.

Looking for quiet in her mind

Shiffrin began working with Fox after the Beijing Winter Games at the suggestion of her mother Eileen, who is also one of her coaches.

Shiffrin, who turned 31 on March 13, has always been introspective. She has been open about her profound grief over the unexpected death of her father Jeff in February 2020. She has not shied away from her complicated feelings about the Olympics.

But there is a difference between giving voice to those things and giving them power.

“You have to live in a way that’s true to who you are and accept the discomfort of other people not always approving and sitting in that,” Fox said. “She’s someone who can say now, 'That hurts me, I’m uncomfortable. And that’s OK.’

“What we try to avoid holds more power,” Fox added. “If we can diffuse it, it doesn’t hold power.”

(Warning: Not safe for work language in post below)

Shiffrin and Fox began preparing for Milano Cortina last summer. The first step was for Shiffrin to be honest about the feelings, and fears, she now has about the Olympics. With herself and then with the rest of her team.

This wasn’t about putting herself back on the podium. It’s quite obvious Shiffrin, whose 109 (and counting) World Cup victories are the most of any Alpine skier, knows how to win. But she is human, and nobody in their right mind would want to endure the abuse and vitriol she got in Beijing and afterward, especially from people who don’t understand the nuances of the sport.

“Victory and defeat live next door to each other. What she was most afraid of was having to feel that defeat publicly again and the narratives that are out of her control,” Fox said.

Fox helped Shiffrin to think of what she does (ski really fast) separately from who she is (a fiancée, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a person who likes and can play the guitar.) They also worked on focusing on what she could control: That minute or so between when she left the starting gate to when she crossed the finish line. Her turns. Her skiing.

Also, to trust in her process and those who were part of it. Her coaches. Her ski techs. Her support staff. Everything else was simply background noise.

They also dug into the grief Shiffrin carries at her father not being here to see her moments of triumph. Or console her when she comes up short.

“We’ve done a lot of work around the duality of winning and joy co-existing with the pain of his loss. It’s not this either or event,” Fox said. “She didn’t have to separate herself from her relationship with her father. She could include him in it despite his absence.”

When Shiffrin arrived at the 2026 Winter Games, she seemed lighter. She made jokes about Beijing and talked about not being consumed by the opinions of others or elements beyond her control.

Then came the team combined.

Olympic 'problem' back in the spotlight

Shiffrin and newly-minted Olympic downhill champion Breezy Johnson were paired for the event, which they’d won when it made its debut at last year’s world championships. When Johnson won the downhill portion, the gold medal seemed like a given.

Except Shiffrin had an uncharacteristically slow run, finishing 15th out of 18 skiers and dropping her and Johnson to fourth.

She’d barely gotten her skis off when the criticism, and the psychoanalyzing, began.

“We had conversations around choking, freezing, the pressure of the Olympics – really the dark side of the criticism,” Fox said. “We really had to get strategic about coping with whatever the world was going to have to say. That’s when we shifted gears a bit.”

Fox had traveled to Milano Cortina to work with Shiffrin and her entire team during the Olympics. They spent long hours working through what Shiffrin was feeling and how it was holding her back.  

She meditated to help her process her feelings. She (mostly) got off social media. She unsubscribed from media accounts that she knew could drag her down. She limited her circle to the people she knew had her best interests at heart.

She journaled. She wrote out mantras and stuck them on her bathroom mirror so she would see them every day.

“No matter what you do, there is always going to be someone who doesn’t like something shiny. That is out of your control and focusing on it is self-torment,” Fox said. “If we focus on those worries or what one critic said, it grows in our mind.”

Instead, Shiffrin focused on her skiing. When she got in the start gate for the women's slalom, there were no “What ifs?” or “What will people say?” clouding her mind. Just the gates in front of her and joy that comes from carving her way down a mountain.

When she crossed the finish line, Shiffrin was Olympic champion for a third time. She won by a whopping 1.5 seconds, a gap so wide silver medalist Camille Rast was closer to the 12th-place finisher than she was to Shiffrin.

“She is just such a badass,” Biles, who has become friends with Shiffrin, said, pride in her voice. “I was really proud of her. The resilience, the determination, the never giving up – people don’t understand how hard it is.

“People will say, 'Wow, their comeback!’ But it was really a lot of mental work, things you never wanted to talk about, wounds you never wanted to re-open,” Biles said. “We had to, to get over that to have (success).

“Don’t forget about the mental work she did.”

Especially when, earlier in the Games, there was yet another cautionary tale of the toll ignoring your mental health can exact.

Malinin succumbs to pressure

Biles was at figure skating the night of the men’s free skate, when Malinin fell twice and landed only three of the seven quadruple jumps he’d planned. In first place after the short program, Malinin wound up eighth.

“I was so heartbroken for him because I could see the pain and heartbreak in his face and body. I felt really, really sad,” Biles said.

Looking back, there were hints of the stress Malinin was feeling. Earlier at the Olympics, he spoke of having “bad days” that “really shuts me down.” Biles reached out to him after the free skate, offering the wisdom of her experience and sharing with Malinin what had worked for her after Tokyo.

“I wanted him to know this isn’t end all be all. You’re so much more than that and so much more than your performances. That was the mindset and conversation I tried to lead with him,” she said.

“I just wanted him to feel that he was still a champion,” Biles added. “He’s already achieved so much and to just hold your head up high. And that you’re just human. (Expletive) happens.”

No doubt Malinin was hearing that from others, too. But the words hit different when they come from another athlete who is the very best in their sport and has had their struggles play out in public.

There is comfort in having others understand what you’re going through. “Trauma bonding,” Biles called it. What would be even better is it not happening in the first place.

When athletes like Biles and Shiffrin and Malinin put a spotlight on mental health, it’s a permission slip for other, lesser-accomplished athletes. When Biles talks about being in therapy – she still goes once a week – or Shiffrin peels back the curtain on her work with Fox, it normalizes adding mental health to your training regimen.

Just as weightlifting and getting massages and working with a nutritionist is now considered a basic necessity of elite-level training, Biles and Fox hope mental health will soon be seen that way, too.

“(Shiffrin) is in a position to invite others to take the risk to be uncomfortable and engage in the awkwardness, at times, of talking about mental health and talking about things that are difficult and knowing it can actually build some really powerful bridges,” Fox said.

“Mikaela … wanted to understand herself more and clear up some of the barriers that were in her way so she could re-up the athlete in her,” Fox said. “Not to be stuck in it, but to learn from it.”

May we all learn from it.